Over the last months our readers were complaining about the low quality of wallpapers featured in the Desktop Wallpaper Calendar series here on Smashing Magazine. To keep the very high quality of the competition and motivate artists and designers to put more thoughts and ideas into creating original and beautiful wallpapers, we carefully reviewed our quality guidelines and decided to select featured wallpapers more strictly. Consequently, over 65% of wallpapers submitted to us in November unfortunately didn’t make it to this post.

We may have been a bit too strict or we may have been not strict enough – please let us know what you think and please also let us know how we can improve the quality of this series!

This post features 45 free desktop wallpapers, created by designers across the globe. Both versions with a calendar and without a calendar can be downloaded for free.

Please notice:

all images can be clicked and lead to the preview of the wallpaper;

you can feature your work in our magazine1 by taking part in our desktop wallpaper calendar series. We are regularly looking for creative designers and artists to be featured on Smashing Magazine. Are you one of them?

So which wallpapers have we received for December 2009?

Christmas couple

“Wallpaper Christmas couple is devoted to the coming holidays.” Designed by Egor Kosten4402 from Ukraine.

X-mas

“Winter is my favourite season and December is the heart of winters, it gives us shortest sunny days and longest cold nights , no doubt its the month of laziness but Christmas isthe most enjoyable and colorful event of this month so this wallpaper is a gift for last celebration of this year with this hope that new year will bring good days for all of us.” Designed by NarjisNaqvi115 from Pakistan.

Christmas Snowman

“I wanted to make something different for this Christmas , so this turned out! I like it very much , especially the collors, so i hope that you will love it too!” Designed by Alexandra Ipate201 from Romania.

Santa’s searching

“For so long, I ‘ve been wondering how Santa managed to collect all the gifts for the good guys among us. And now I’m convinced maybe he’s using some hi-tech help. May you all have a beautiful and inspirational Xmas time!” Designed by Samoo306 from Italy.

Hurry up, Rudolph!

“Well, the economic crisis even hit Santa Claus and he had to sell his sleigh and fire aaaaaall the reindeers – except for Rudolph, who now has to drag all the presents through the snow on his own….:) Initially I was inspired by a little Santa Claus ceramic figure I had bought recently. I just loved it so much, I had to make some kind of artwork out of it. Merry Christmas!” Designed by Nicole Bauer385 from Germany.

Happy Families are Made in China

“Outsourcing at it’s finest. Since all of our appliances and machines are made far east for the buying people far west, this wallpaper ironically briefly glimpses in the future of Mankind, but it is also homage to Tolstoy’s Ana Karenina and his thoughts on happy families: “Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.All of this was compiled from free resources around the Web. Background snow photo courtesy of Got3d559” Designed by Antonio Hadrovic560 from Croatia.

Letter to Santa

“This wallpaper is one panel of a dark Christmas comic that we’ve been working on lately. We were inspired by old style Coca Cola commercials and wanted to give it a similar look. We’re planning to unveil the whole comic in a month on the Wet Raspberry Comics website.” Designed by Stefan and Xenia609 from USA.

Merry Christmas

“Though we hate to admit it, Christmas is all about dropping our design shield and basking in the glory of gawdy lights, terrible tunes, and even worse Christmas cards. This wallpaper celebrates in ‘in-your-face’ side of Christmas, with enough lights to bring down the power grid. Have a great holiday.” Designed by chopeh641 from UK.

Join in next month!

Please notice that we respect the ideas and motivation behind artists’ work which is why we’ve given artists full freedom to explore their creativity and express emotions and experience through their works. And this is also why the themes of the wallpapers weren’t anyhow influenced by us, but designed from scratch by the artists themselves.

Thanks to all designers for participation. Join in next month668! And smashing December and a smashing new year, folks!

The Smashing team loves high-quality content and cares about the little details. Through our online articles, Smashing Books, eBooks as well as Smashing Conferences, we are committed to stimulating creativity and strengthening the web design community’s creative forces.

maryam

ands01

I think you need to just get on with it if you don’t celebrate Christmas that’s fine, but please be quiet and let the people who do enjoy it carry on… I’m sure you won’t be working Christmas day will you!

Phil D.

snnaqvi

Tracy

I can’t believe people complain! It’s free and there is a wide variety. I look forward to coming here every month and selecting a new one for the month,. Sometimes I change every week. Thank you – I appreciate them very much!

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Dawn B.

I completely agree, what are some complaining about? There is some wonderful work here, and it’s all free. I look forward to the beginning of a new month just so I can come here and pick a new calendar wallpaper. To the artists-you’ve done some great work here as usual.

moabi

Mike

Thank you for the nice wallpapers. Please continue to provide the Christmas themes for more of your posts. While some may not celebrate Christmas, the vast majority do and we appriciate the celebration of Christ’s birthday!

Vladimir Remenar

Selina

Thanks for the great selection! There were many nice ones this month. :) Even though I DO celebrate Christmas, I’m sure there are people who don’t that would appreciate a few more non-Christmas themed ones to choose from. Thanks to everyone who contributed!

Monica

Josh

Nice wallpapers. Unfortunately only a couple of them were in my resolution (1152×864), and neither of which I liked enough to use. So I won’t be using a Smashing wallpaper this month (which is usually something I really look forward to!)

Since you are modifying your requirements, why not ensure that every submitted wallpaper is available in an array of sizes? That’s not too difficult for the designers.

rickyh

Cheylea

I’m soo bummed with these wallpapers. You can tell that whichever group picked them out like the cartoon looking pictures, which is very disappointing, because I come on here for the amazing landscape ones. Hopefully January’s batch will be more impressive. :-(

Phil

April

Thank you Smashing Magazine and thank you Phil for choosing my design. It’s my first time to join an online contest and I’m so happy there are people who are appreciate my work. You guys keep me going on.Thank you so much!

Fabio Toscani

NINA

Thanks for the great selection! There were many nice ones this month. :) Even though I DO celebrate Christmas, I’m sure there are people who don’t that would appreciate a few more non-Christmas themed ones to choose from. Thanks to everyone who contributed!

Joshua Tan

sabrina card

I celebrate xmas, but still would have liked to have seen some more snow/winter themes. (I guess those are more likely to be submitted Jan/Feb.) Even with that said I think this has got to be one of the best wallpaper collections so far this year. Great job to all the designers.

Federica

Michael

When looking through this collection I liked at first the work of Alexandra Ipate. Following the link to her website I was very impressed, because in her blog she gives away lot of vector arts for free. But is she really so productive to put such an amount of work for free online every day?

When reading the blog introduction at the top of the page she tells us: “I made this blog with the purpose of sharing with you all the resources, informations, cool things that I can find on the internet.” So it seems most of the graphics are not from her. But just try and download one of her files e.g. http://blog.alexandraipate.ro/2009/11/20/winter-banners-vector-free/. Then open the file and you’ll find that the files are named like “shutterstock_17785228.eps”.

So I went over to shutterstock and searched for the image number 17785228. (http://www.shutterstock.com/pic.mhtml?id=17785228) So it seems that the image was really created by Aleksandra Nadeina and I can buy that image. Nothing there tells me that it is free. I assume that most (if not all) other images are also not really free.

Back to the calendar images on this page. I’m not sure if the image on this page was really created by Alexandra Ipate, though I don’t know it. And I think such designers should not be supported by Smashing magazine. If the original designer wanted to give it away for free, she would have done this.

I would not use any of the images on her website (either private or commercial). It could be that there are informations embedded in the image to identify any usage.

Jovana

No

Not really that good though are they… Smashing Magazine often showcase stuff of a lot higher quality (not desktop calendars though, don’t see the point in them), so I don’t see where their taste has gone for these.
Great showcase of people’s iStock purchases though!

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Joan

Artboy34

I agree with the comment about what seems to be a leaning toward cartoonish designs. “Winter Magic” is a beautful example of a more realistic design, but it is in very small company. Perhaps a few more with photos next time?

And I just have to say that it’s very sad to see so many Christmas designs without any mention of Jesus, Savior, Messiah, or Coming King.

Fyfe

JKuik

Nice collection but… i wish there is something different than every shop window and tv-adds. I like “Winter magic” and “Nyc grunge”. And I hope that january pick would not be only new-year-happy-sad themes :)

eriwyn

Gianni

Shea

I think they’re great!!
Thank you as always for providing me an endless supply of desktop images!! I was thinking that it’s great that there was a variety of non-christmas themed designs. Also I loved the Santa on the Beach, would love to see more from the southern hemisphere where they get to go to the beach and enjoy the beautiful weather while we bundle up =)

Thank you so much for continuing to provide beautiful artwork to the public for free!!

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Don Giannatti

Thanks for doing this month in and month out. Love that I can grab something cool from you guys for free. Those who are complaining were probably delayed getting their designs to you on time on accounta they don’t do nothin but complain.

Marta

Unfortunately didn’t make it this month – is there any chance that the authors whose calendars weren’t submitted will get an info why it is so (I don’t mind getting to know that it sucked).

My opinion about this month’s calendars – too many Christmas and winter themed – not everybody celebrates or likes Christmas and some live in hot parts of the world (and even those who have winter do not necessarily want to see it on the desktop – sometimes a window is enough). Besides there are way too many illustration wallpapers, it’s a shame typography and photography themed are so scarce.

Somebody above said that some designs were originally stock images used by some designers – if it’s true that is a shame – most of us try hard to be inventive and create by ourselves – designs which are based on stock images shouldn’t be placed here. What difficulty in buying a stock photo and adding a calendar???

Last but not least – most of the designs are really lovely even if they are not my type. Good job:)

Charles

Very nicely done, all! I especially like “Christmas couple”, “Numbers”, “Winter Magic”, “Happy Families are Made in China”, “Merry Christmas”, and “Xmas Gifts”. Great message from Millicent Bowman on “Seek Him” as well.

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Rawan

This is one of the most amazing collections! I simply loved it! I liked all of them, I dint find a single wallpaper that I dint like … so, great job designers … good job SM for the quality control :)
like I said i loved them all but my favorites are:
1. x-mas tree
2. Christmas Couple
3. Red December
4. Christmas Ribbons
5. Santa Searching
6. Snow Deer
7. Hurry up Rudolph
8. Electricity
9. K.I.S.S

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Joe

Perhaps SM could come up with a post/place for those wallpapers that dint make the cut!! Those who want the quality stay here, and those who are curious to see all the great minds at work, would not mind seeing that too!

Other idea would be too post those wallpapers in a flickr pool. To create a wallpaper is not a joke, it takes hours hours of effort before the computer, and many more visualizing. Felt SM could be treat them better!

TrapKick

I love that so many comments are about how there are so many Christmas themed designs. DUH it’s because the majority of the people celebrate Christmas hence the majority are Christmas papers.
Let’s stop being so “PC”…

Andy

It just hit me that I could use these (and past, and other) wallpapers for my twitter page – working on it now. It’d be neat to see this done specifically for twitter. Thanks for all the great work (from another guy who loves Christmas).

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tonycheese

*Generic complaint about the fact that there are too many Christmas wallpapers*

Are you guys serious? It’s December.

I don’t celebrate Christmas but I’m not oblivious to the fact that a LOT of people do. I doubt all these designers got together and all decided to make a Christmas wallpaper (for free) just to annoy you. As TrapKick pointed out only 64% are Christmas related.

Anyway, I’ve set my wallpaper in the office to ‘Merry Christmas’ by Chopeh. Mainly for the benefit of colleagues walking past :)

Thanks SM for posting these, and thanks to all the designers for making them!

Rahul

Xeni

I have to say I was really disappointed last month when I couldnt even find one wallpaper I liked. Definitely improved that this month because I really cant decide which to use! (Since this means changing to a new one every few days, I think its awesome!)

Thanks so much for picking only awesome ones!

Xeni

P.S. I think there is an almost too large focus on Christmas, perhaps a few more New Year, Yule, Hanukkah or just Winter themes would have been great, but since this was probably due to artist choice and not SM’s fault, I’ll forgive ;)

B-Twien Bytes

George Egonut

Can we start a pool from now on and bet on which number post will be the first to complain about the quality of the wallpapers? Suggestion: you don’t like it, you don’t use it. You think you can do better, prove it.

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